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People-powered databases can help you find your ancestor’s grave, says Jonathan Scott
Key online resources to locate final resting places
Even before the arrival of the web, finding records of a death back to 1837 using civil-registration indexes was relatively easy. Tracking down records of burials or cremations, on the other hand, was tricky. Graveyards, municipal cemeteries and crematoria look after their own records, there is no central registry, and what is available online varies a great deal from place to place.
Fortunately over the past two decades the gaps have gradually been filled by communitygenerated and commercial hubs specialising in memorial inscriptions (MIs) and cemetery records. Certainly it’s always worth finding a grave if you can. Gravestones may give biographical information, include crests or heraldic devices, and allow you to make judgements about status. The genealogical society for an area will often have produced transcriptions of MIs in various formats. Remember too that volunteer groups and some councils publish cemetery databases online. And keep in mind that some people may have asked to be buried a long way from where they were living when they died.